Meet Our Teacher, Tit Toeng!

My name is Tit Toeng. I am a teacher at Khmer for Khmer Organization (KKO). I was born in 1999. I am from Tom Roeng village, Reul commune, Pouk district, Siem Reap province, Cambodia. I grew up in a nuclear family consisting of a mother, a father, and four children. One of my sisters already got married. My parents have been farmers for their whole life. They have been raising some animals such as ducks, chickens, and cows to support the family. They also grow some vegetables for daily consume. I was a primary student when I was 8 years old and l graduated high school in 2020 during COVID 19. After that, my twin sister and I moved to the town to continue our educational journey at university. We have worked and studied hard at the same time. I have started learning at one of the universities in Siem Reap which is called Cambodian University for Specialties (CUS). The major is Teaching English as Foreign Language (TEFL). In 2023, I received a scholarship from Richard Kroeger, the volunteer and donor of KKO for my studying while I was learning in year 3. Currently, I am preparing for the state examination to finish my bachelor degree.

In 2022, I was a novice English teacher at ASEAB school at that time, and it was my first experience teaching small kids and young adult students. After teaching there for more than a half of a year, I decided to move to a new work place. It is the place that I have been teaching, called Khmer for Khmer Organization (KKO). I was a trainee teacher in the late 2022 when I first moved here. It has nearly been two years since I became an official teacher. I really appreciated that I was qualified to teach young learners and adult learners with different levels at the same time. Even though I have faced many challenges, I have improved a lot. Actually, during teaching in this organization, I have joined many workshops related to English teaching skills. At the same time, I had been joined to one of the non-profit teacher training centres. It is called the Teaching Development Support Organization (TDSO), which provides the opportunity for young and new English teachers who work in the teaching field to improve the basic skills of English teaching. I learned and gained a lot of knowledge and experiences to improve my teaching ability and also to solve the problems during class. Honestly, I am privileged to become a teacher here because I usually work with international voluntary teachers who come from different places, and we can exchange and share our culture and knowledge of teaching with each other. Since I have taught here, I have gained more experiences and knowledge. However, I sometimes encountered some problems with the different level of five classes a day; that is the reason I had less time to prepare the lesson plan for each class, but I could overcome it smoothly. However, these matters could not stop me because I really love and enjoy teaching and sharing with young children.

I am now a full-time teacher. I really appreciate having a wonderful opportunity to teach in Khmer for Khmer Organization (KKO) because it is a good organization that has provided the transparency and responsibility. This organization provides English classes for free of charge for all learners who are willing to pursue more knowledge in their learning field.

Recently, I am still working the journey of the English teaching field in this organization (KKO) because I want to improve and update my teaching skills and to get more experiences to be better and better. On the other hand, I want to transfer my knowledge or what I have learned to the next generation of students. I am hopeful all Cambodian students have the chance to learn and qualify enough in English learning.